ARTICLES, COLUMNS, ESSAYS

The Numbers Are Horrifying:

• As of yesterday (Wednesday, Aug 12), 5,294,541 Americans had contracted COVID-19.

• There were 45,302 new cases reported yesterday.

• There have been 168, 310 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.

• There were 1,298 souls added to that mournful list yesterday.

• A CDC review recently noted that each of these categories was probably underreported by at least 10%.

Worse Even Than The Number Of Souls Lost Thus Far:

After taking its first victim in the U.S. on February 6, COVID-19 has taken advantage of the gobsmacking professional incompetence of, the dismal disinterest of and the jaw-dropping personal pathologies of Donald Trump to overwhelm communities large and small, urban and rural, monied and poor.  The elderly, the middle-aged and the young—age provides no exemptions, no immunity.

Had he been interested, this president had the power to mobilize—with unparalleled speed—resources of unparalleled volume that could have been used to implement a massive and comprehensive federal plan to mitigate the spread and enhance the treatment protocols of this viral nightmare.

Alas, he wasn’t interested.

Instead, he ignored the warnings and recommendations of some of the best and brightest medical/scientific minds on the planet, ignored the front-and-center evidence per the extent of the COVID-19 threat, publicly engaged in an embarrassing, everyday stream-of-consciousness blame-game and then, to the bewilderment of sentient beings everywhere, “assured” the country that the pandemic would “just disappear—like magic, it will just disappear.”

Trump did provide some unintentional comic relief by offering suggestions per what Americans could do to stave off the virus until it just “magically disappears”:

(1) Take the drug Hydroxychloroquine (useless against the virus, potentially dangerous to those with cardiac issues, but profitable to Trump’s friends who immediately invested in it);

(2) Knock down a quart of Clorox or Lysol or any other lethal household disinfectant (if it will clean a bathtub, sink or dirty toilet, imagine what it could do to a mere virus);

(3) Insert into the body—via an unnamed entry point—a tube that emits UV rays and, as my brother laughingly put it, “light it up” (it might “burn” the virus out the way small skin lesions are “burned” from one’s arm).

But, in the end, Trump did absolutely nothing.And, in the end, he is doing absolutely nothing.  Worst of all, he is going to do absolutely nothing.

Hence, healthcare systems immense and tiny have been and are being crushed across the country.  The essential personnel—medical and not, heroes all—required to keep those systems functional are beginning to bend and sometimes break under the combined physical and psychological pressures brought to bear on them. 

And, inexorably, the death toll continues to mount—the Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington now projects that COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S. will reach 300,000 by December, which is only 3.5 months away.

Each one of those 300,000 souls, by the way, is someone’s grandfather or grandmother or father or mother or son or daughter or brother or sister or uncle or aunt or best friend or next-door neighbor.  And each one had a name.

There Is No Help Coming.  You’re On Your Own.  

COVID-19 was always going to be too much to handle for the intellectually- and emotionally-challenged president fast becoming known in some circles as Impotus Masculinitus (or, perhaps better, Imbecilus Masculinitus).  The same was the case for the politically-minded toadies/sycophants and empty-headed family members with which he surrounded himself, as well as the politically-minded Republicans who daily sacrifice their humanity and their patriotic duty for fear they will become targets of President Robe & Slippers’ Twitter ire.  And for the MAGA cultists who reflexively bow in fealty before the orange-faced—though he has, of late, apparently switched to the bronzer so liberally employed by his wife—crook who is picking their pockets while he lines his own.

The maxim that was so obvious to the rest of the world—and, to the majority of Americans—apparently went into one ear and, without being hindered by an excess of grey matter, out the other of this poseur president, his court jesters, his feckless political party and his card-carrying MAGA-members:  A pandemic must be treated as a public health issue before its political dimensions are elevated to priority status.

If we know anything about Donald Trump, we know that he will do anything—anything!—to avoid a re-election defeat.  Hence, the public health issues—the human side—of this viral tsunami have been of little interest to him.  Indeed, when Jonathan Swan of Axios mentioned the staggering death toll to him in a recent interview, Trump remained expressionless, shrugged his shoulders and said, “It is what it is.”  Only the political issues related to his upcoming re-elect effort elicit anything other than disinterest from this terribly damaged man.

For Donald Trump, politics took precedence over public health.  The former was/is of signal import to Trump.  The latter was/is barely on his radar, typically showing up only when he thinks one of its elements can be used to further the political end of widening and making more permanent the cultural divide—pro-Trump v. anti-Trump—that he believes to be fundamental to an electoral victory on November 3.

This rigid, politicized division of the culture into warring camps explains why the more tribal pro-Trumpers actually believe the onslaught of lies, misinformation and disinformation about the coronavirus put out daily by this president, his hacks and FOX News.  Science and scientific expertise be damned, they’ll take the word of the self-proclaimed “stable genius” who had to pay a proxy to take the SAT for him.

It explains how mask-wearing and public-distancing became less a public health issue than a political identity issue for pro-Trumpers.

It explains how re-opening the schools—i.e.; using our kids/grandkids as pawns in Trump’s attempt to paint a false landscape of normalcy—became less a public health issue than a political identity issue for pro-Trumpers.

It explains the verbal and even physical attacks visited upon front-line health care professionals by—wait for it!—pro-Trumpers.

It explains why, having been subjected to a barrage of private and public verbal attacks and threats made by pro-Trumpers, administration officials and Trump himself, a Kaiser Health/AP review found that 49 state and local public health officials had left their jobs since May.  Dr. Tony Fauci, one of the world’s foremost experts on virology and pandemics, has received so many threats that he had to hire a security detail to protect himself, his wife and their children.

It explains why the government response to the pandemic—with a few exceptions at the state level—has been so passive, so incoherent, so inhumane, so ineffective, so deadly and so utterly lacking in leadership.  While the president plays golf every weekend and plays politics via his twitter account and laughable afternoon “briefings,” the greatest public health threat of our time goes unmentioned as the death toll continues to mount. 

The implications?

There is no plan. 

There has never been a plan. 

There isn’t going to be a plan.

The cavalry isn’t coming to help us because the “commander-in-chief” didn’t care enough about us to form one.

We are on our own.

My son was seven or so when, after long resisting the urge to ask, I finally asked him the question that had previously been posed to him on interminable occasions by an interminable number of family members, an interminable number of friends and an interminable number of church members:  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

He issued an intentionally demonstrable sigh of frustration at once again being asked, at seven years-old, to project the trajectory of a future that lay, at that moment, far beyond the horizon, looked up at me and, in perhaps the most revealing way he had ever responded to the question, said, “Taller.”

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The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, stands out in any gathering of world leaders if only because she is one of the few women to presently lead a major country.  She also stands out because of her relative youth—at 38, she is the youngest woman to presently lead a major country, the first woman leader in three decades to give birth while in office and the first woman leader to ever tote her relative newborn onto the floor of the United Nations General Assembly.  But those biographical attributes pale relative to the personal attributes of self-confidence, poise, intellect, steady hand and command of policy issues that have marked her as someone to watch since she arrived on the global stage in the fall of 2017.  Add to all of those qualities an understated, genuinely personal sensitivity to her fellow Kiwis and it is easy to understand her almost meteoric rise to the top position in New Zealand’s government.

Using all of the arrows in her considerable quiver, the Prime Minister, on this weekend past, proved herself more than worthy of the confidence placed in her by both New Zealand’s ruling party and New Zealand’s populace.  Amidst the toxic combination of horror, grief, fear, anger and confusion that followed the attack by a white supremacist on Muslims attending their traditional Friday prayer services at two mosques in Christchurch—fifty dead, dozens more hospitalized—Ms. Ardern’s words and actions were, from the get-go, absolutely flinch-free, pitch-perfect and preternaturally genuine.  They were also quintessentially Kiwi, both charting and helming the course that would guide her nation’s remarkable response to a tragedy that put it in uncharted, tumultuous waters.  Dispensing with what has become tiresome political choreography—“thoughts and prayers, best of luck to ya’, yada, yada, yada”—she said and did what a leader with the best interests of her/his countrymen at heart would say and do.

In order to unite the country in what first became an outpouring of national grief and then evolved into an outpouring of world-wide grief, Ms. Ardern prioritized the message that private prejudices should be transcended by New Zealand’s national identity.   She pulled no punches and refused to descend into the shadows of embarrassing political gobbledy-gook best exemplified by a heinous statement such as “there were fine people on both sides.”  Instead, she framed the massacre for what it was:  A terrorist attack not just on the Muslim community, not just on an immigrant community, but on the nation itself—on New Zealand’s values and way of life.  And did so with an eloquent tweet unlike anything Americans have come to expect from the divisive, derisive, grievance-based Twitter account belonging to the current occupant of the White House:  “Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities—New Zealand is their home—they are us.”

Consider again what she said about New Zealand’s immigrant communities:  “New Zealand is their home—they are us!”

They. Are. Us.

As American civic life devolves under the transactional, autocratic impulses of a corrupt, racist, incoherent president who keeps constant company with our darkest angels and regularly calls them forth in his relatively small but visceral—read reflexively angry, fearful, pearl-clutching, self-debasing—voter base of white supplicants, watching Kiwis respond to the example of indisputable moral authority modeled by their country’s leadership has been like a breath of fresh air.

In myriad ways, New Zealanders were united in both word and action to affirm that the white supremacist attacker—whose “manifesto” mentioned Donald Trump as an inspiration—in no way  gave voice to their common, defining values:  Flowers, personal notes, small items serving as symbols of solidarity were piled on top of each other as memorial tributes all across both the North Island and the South Island (as well as on sidewalks in front of mosques around the world) grew in both number and size; people waited in line for hours in order to just sign condolence books; donations large and small for the affected families flooded into both the Al Noor and Linwood Mosques in Christchurch; non-Muslim women—following the example of their prime minister—covered their heads with scarves to show that they were “as one” with their hajib-wearing Muslim sisters; on the Sunday following the terror attack, congregations throughout the country sang the triumphant national anthem of New Zealand which envisions “men of every creed and race” gathering before the face of God in a “free land.”

Donald Trump, as we have painfully learned, is apparently incapable of speaking words of compassion or comfort from the heart.  Hence, during his phone call to Ms. Ardern, he read remarks written for him and, in a tone dripping with his typical insincerity, asked what he “could do.”  The prime minister, in words that quickly went viral around the globe, suggested that he could express his “sympathy and love to all Muslim communities.”

Needless to say, the American Disgrace—asked later if he thought the white supremacy movement or white supremacist terrorism “was a problem,” he incomprehensibly answered, “No, I don’t think so” and then lied by claiming he didn’t “know much about it”—had no further comment on the Christchurch slaughter, save a perfunctory description of it as “horrible.”

Given Trump’s xenophobic antipathy toward “Muslim communities” both in the U.S. and abroad, there was little reason to think that the prime minister expected anything else from him.  Or that she cared enough to give it another thought—after all, she was busy lifting onto her small but powerful shoulders a stunned, grief-filled, jittery-nerved country and, with a determination that was almost breathtaking to watch, carrying it through the valley of the shadow.

There was no time to give further thought to poseurs like Donald Trump.

There never is.

There never should be.

On the Thursday following the agony of the previous Friday, I heard via the BBC that Ms. Ardern had delivered on her emotional promise—made almost immediately after the mosque shootings in Christchurch—to enact new gun control measures post haste.  Put that in context:  On April 10, 26 days after the Christchurch shootings, New Zealand’s legislature—with only one dissenting vote—passed a gun control bill banning military-style weapons.  It goes into effect immediately. 

I thought about the still-grieving parents at Sandy Hook, to whom the bought-and-sold-to-the-NRA Republicans offered no comfort other than “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  I thought about Barack Obama, tears of grief in his eyes and righteous anger in his voice, telling the nation that he had failed to convince Republicans to help pass even the most humble background-check bill that might “make our country a safer place.”  I thought about the Parkland kids, especially Emma Gonzalez, who spoke for millions of Americans—young and old—when she led thousands of other young people in her poignant, angry, righteous chant, “I call…B.S.!”

I thought again about Jacinda Ardern and her fellow Kiwis:  It took 7 days for them—in response to an attack on an ethnic/religious minority that makes up only 1% of their population, for God’s sake—to mobilize their grief/anger into beginning to write and kindle support for the action that would become law 19 days later.  And I thought about the people of the United States, who know that such mobilization to make our country “a safer place” will never happen in our lifetimes.  Never.    

Unable to return to the Al Noor Mosque for Friday prayers a week after the killings, Muslim worshippers gathered outside their place of worship for a memorial service to be followed by their traditional service.  Worshipping with them was their prime minister, accompanied by a massive crowd—estimated at 20,000—of non-Muslim Kiwis who filled Hagley Park in Christchurch, which is just across the street from the mosque.  Ms. Ardern again wore a black headscarf, as did thousands of women—“from police officers to TV news presenters to everyday citizens”—who wished to show their respect for and solidarity with their fellow New Zealanders.

Following brief words from the prime minister that began the memorial service—“When any part of the body suffers, the whole body feels pain.  New Zealand mourns with you; we are one.”—the “adhan,” which is the Muslim call to prayer, was broadcast on national television and radio stations across the country and followed by two minutes of silent remembrance.

It was a stunning, moving scene made only moreso by the fact that it played out not only in Christchurch, but at Muslim places of worship across both the South and North Islands, where diverse crowds—“from students to leather-clad bikers”—memorialized the dead and honored the living by performing the “haka,” a traditional ceremonial dance common to the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand and a fundamental part of the country’s cultural/national identity.  A cultural/national identity so embedded in a united citizenry and so fiercely protected by a young prime minister clearly guided by the values inherent in it that, rather than being sullied by murderous acts inspired by an ideology conceived and born in human sewers, it emerged as an even brighter and stronger beacon, bearing witness to the power of righteous leadership and bedrock moral authority.

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The tallest building in the world is Dubai’s Burj Khalifaworld.  [Think Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible:  Ghost Protocol]

Late last Friday night, a photograph of the building was posted on Twitter by Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.  It showed the tallest building in the world adorned with an enormous image of Jacinda Ardern, her head covered with a black scarf, embracing a grieving Muslim woman.  Two words appeared above them:  “Salam” and “Peace.”

Accompanying the photo was a message:  “Thank you @jacindaardern and New Zealand for your sincere empathy and support that has won the respect of 1.5 billion Muslims after the terrorist attack that shook the Muslim community around the world.”

I’m sure that Ms. Ardern and her fellow Kiwis appreciated the kind words.  I’m equally sure the Kiwis were right proud to see their prime minister respectfully pictured up-and-down one side of the tallest building in the world.  But my real guess is that they didn’t need to see that projected image to know just how tall Ms. Ardern now stands in the eyes of those of us who know that what our world perhaps most needs at this dark moment in history is authentic leadership grounded in authentic moral/ethical authority.  And let me add a shout-out to the Kiwis themselves, who knew righteous leadership when they saw it and, as a people, followed the example it set.

I don’t know if, when she was seven or so, Jacinda Ardern’s greatest desire per what she would be “when she grew up” was “Taller.”  But, even if it wasn’t, she is “taller” at this moment than any world leader whom I can think of.  And all who make up #KiwiNation grew taller right along with her.

Let’s begin with two things upon which the facts agree:  (1) During his lie-filled, fear-mongering, “American Carnage” presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised his cultic following that, if elected, he would prevent immigrants/asylum-seekers/refugees from illegally entering the country via the southern border by building “a big, beautiful wall” that would, despite his present-day claims to the contrary, extend the length of the southern border; (2) During his lie-filled, fear-mongering, “American Carnage” presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised his cultic following that, if elected, that “big, beautiful wall” would be paid for by Mexico.

Amirite?

Yes, Irite!

THE ORIGIN OF THE PROMISES

On June 16, 2015, King Donald and Queen Melania did their poseur best to mimic a royal entrance by descending a staircase into the gaudy, gauche-gilded, Versailles-wannabe lobby of Trump Tower.  After lying that the crowd numbered “in the thousands” (seriously, in the lobby of Trump Tower?), the Donald extended the lie by definitively stating that its size—size, it’s always about size for Tiny Hands!— surpassed any other in the history of candidacy announcements.  Having thus given away the reason for the assemblage—oblivious much, Donald?—Trump announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring per the Republican presidential nomination for the 2016 election cycle. 

Beginning with his ensuing announcement speech/screed and continuing until the close, on January 20, 2017, of what had to be the strangest, most dark, and most devoid of aspiration/inspiration inaugural speech any American president has ever delivered—at its end, George W. Bush, laughing, leaned over and whispered to Michelle Obama, “That was some weird s**t”—Trump’s campaign was defined, to a great degree, by (1) his relentless screeds/lies about U.S. immigration policy and (2) his relentless fear-mongering, lying and seeding of misinformation/disinformation about its consequences for everyday Americans.  

Both Trump’s personal life and his business life have, throughout his decades as a public figure, evidenced his amoral, transactional, autocratic nature—a trait set that would make any mama proud!  Combine those swamp-critter instincts with a long, well-documented history of misogynistic, racist and xenophobic statements/actions and what one gets is a character-disordered, arrested development—he daily pin-balls between the infantile and the juvenile—man/child for whom applause, adulation and power are like mother’s milk to an infant.  One also gets a man/child who proved to be easy prey for the likes of alt-right, white nationalist/supremacist sympathizers like Steve Bannon and Steven Miller.  Thus did a distinctly un-holy union produce a distinctly un-presidential campaign for the presidency that employed tactics one might expect to find highlighted in Chapter One of The White Demagogue’s Handbook.

Urged on by the likes of Bannon, Miller and related ilk, Trump effectively utilized explicit/implicit race-baiting rhetoric in order to play to the explicit/implicit racism that, despite their claims to the contrary, seems almost endemic to a large percentage of his white base—especially those that attended the campaign’s “Make Daddy Feel Good” adulation fests and alternately

(1) foamed at the mouth,

(2) screeched “Lock Her Up!” in unison at every mention of Hillary Clinton,

(3) participated in the antiphonal “What are we gonna’ do?”/”Build that wall!” and “Who’s gonna’ pay for it?”/”Mexico!”/”Damn right!” chants,

(4) foamed at the mouth some more and,

(5) their faces contorted with fear/anger/hate, hissed, booed, hoisted a big middle-finger to and occasionally threatened media-types confined to a “press pen” at the back of whatever rally hall the Trumpsters were soiling.

He then played to the racist fears of his #Snowflake base by painting a disgustingly false, dystopian landscape of an America overrun by vicious, non-human/animal-like brown or black males whose only reasons for “invading”/immigrating to the United States are to

(1) “kill white people” (as viciously as they can),

(2) in the storied vernacular of the Ku Klux Klan, “rape your women” (because we all know, don’t we, that dark-skinned males live to, uh, “rape white women”?),

(3) “steal high-paying jobs from white people standing in line to apply for them” (working on landscaping crews, working fields and orchards across the country, working cattle ranches, hog farms and chicken houses, working slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants, working lobster boats and shrimp boats and fishing boats, working construction as unskilled laborers, cleaning motel/hotel rooms at Donald Trump properties, keeping Donald Trump’s golf courses and grounds trimmed and cut—you get the picture, right?),

(4) “get your kids addicted to illegal drugs so they can turn your sons into pushers and your blonde, Norwegian-looking daughters into hookers who would do anything for a heroin fix or a vial of crack.”

“Illegal alien” females of color?  They only cross the border, according to Trump, in order to have babies on U.S. soil so that they can free-ride for the rest of their lives off the taxes paid by hard-working white Americans.  “Anchor babies,” Trump called them, to the delight of his evangelical, family-values hypocrites/sycophants.

Put simply, in the tradition of racist autocrats, he sought to sow division in the populace by creating an “Us” (white people) v. “Them” (people of color) paradigm and casting “Them” as presenting an existential threat to “Our Way Of Life” and “Our Civilization.”  According to Donald Trump—who, in his pre-presidential life, was a world-renowned scholar known for his ground-breaking sociological/anthropological research into the rise and fall of societies/cultures—the societal and cultural problems “We” face (breakdown of traditional values, loss of moral grounding, crime, diseases of epidemic proportions, rampant drug use, unemployment, inequality, lack of economic mobility, et al) are primarily attributable to the presence of “Them.”  America has lost its “greatness,” claimed Trump.  America is “in decline,” claimed Trump.  And “They” are responsible.

Hence, the way to “Make America Great Again,” said the self-proclaimed “nationalist,” was clear.  “We” must, in essence, turn on “Them.”  “We” must limit their numbers in order to limit the harm they can do to “Our” country and “Our” way of life and, for that matter, “Our” civilization.  And “We” must elect Donald Trump to the presidency because, as he definitively stated, “Only I can fix it.”

Who knew?

Yes, Donald Trump posited himself as the Savior not only of “Our” country, not only of “Our” way of life but—wait for it!—of Western Civilization.

Grandiose much?

So, how did the Grifter from Queens plan to “fix it?”  How did he plan to “save” not only “Our” country but “Our” way of life and, by God, Western Civilization itself?

First, there would be a ramped-up effort to purge the country of non-white immigrants.  Some—we term them “undocumented”—lack the proper “papers” (these would include many of the the service workers, for whom fraudulent “papers” were obtained via Trump Inc connections, who cleaned his personal quarters at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club and, as we now know, worked the grounds, the grill rooms, the restaurants and the hotel quarters at several other of his golf clubs/resorts).  Some actually have the proper “papers.”  And others have already become naturalized citizens . But, under the Trump/Sessions reign of terror, whether an immigrant-of-color be illegally or legally in-country, the sense of things was going to be “We’ll find something on you so we can put you on a bus or a plane to somewhere else.”

Second, Trump promised that, in order to “protect the country” from non-Norwegian, non-white refugees and asylum-seekers looking for sanctuary in “The Land of the Free and The Home of the Pearl-Clutchers,” he would build that “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border.  Oh, and he promised to make “Mexico pay for it.”

In other words, Trump’s plan to save “Our” country, “Our” way of life and the entirety of Western Civilization could be boiled down to (1) Kick “Them” Out and (2) Keep “Them” Out.  Trump has even, of late, come up with his own little ditty for it:  “Build the Wall, Crime will Fall!”  It hasn’t really caught on yet, but give it time and maybe 10,000 “executive time” tweets.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out that the president who struggles to formulate a compound sentence, the Wharton School of Finance graduate (well, he spent two relatively non-notable years there after transferring from Fordham University) who apparently was having his bone spurs treated while his first-grade classmates were in Spelling 101, liked easy-to-remember slogans and simplistic-to-the-point-of-embarrassing solutions.  Kick “Them” Out and Keep “Them” Out did not, after all, portend serious conversations about immigration policy.  It was easier and less intellectually taxing to go for the racist/xenophobic applause lines—and go after the mainstream media for calling out the demagoguery—when speaking to rally-goers at, say, Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

I’M NOT OBLIGATED TO HELP DONALD TRUMP FULFILL HIS PROMISES

Supplicants of The Savior of Western Civilization by-and-large justify their reflexive, visceral support for the #TrumpWall—otherwise known as Donald’s Mega-Billion Dollar Totemic Vanity Project—by reciting talking points from his bogus, fact-averse rants about “the crisis on the southern border” or “our national emergency” or the apocalypse to come if “We” don’t Kick “Them” Out and Keep “Them” Out.

Whatever.

When they discover that I, like the majority of all Americans and the even greater majority of those who populate the congressional districts along the southern border (including all nine congressional representatives from districts along the border and the vast majority of the 59 sheriffs who oversee local law enforcement across the entire southern border), am opposed to the #TrumpWall, they by-and-large accuse me of favoring “open borders” and “unrestricted, unlimited, ‘just let ’em all in and don’t even bother to get their names’ immigration.”

I don’t.  I don’t know anyone who does.  But, whatever.

They have shown no interest in listening to my rebuttal of Trump’s bogus meta-narrative and even less interest in listening to my takedown of his gobsmackingly simplistic solution to a “national emergency” that, according to the chiefs of every U.S. intelligence service, isn’t.  And they have saved their most disdainful, dismissive eye-rolls for that moment when I begin to make my case for smart, comprehensive immigration reform that takes seriously the complexities and nuances of humanitarian, economic, political and border security issues.

I have, however, on more than one occasion, had a #TrumpWall supporter tell me that, despite the fact that they pretty much agreed that Trump’s narrative about immigration was false, they still supported it.  And, they continued, so should I.  Indeed, despite my opposition to it, I should feel obligated to support it—a talking point that has actually gained traction with a number of GOP operatives who have taken to radio and television talk-shows to tout it.

Why?

Brace yourself.

I should feel obligated to support the #TrumpWall because, during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised his supporters that he was going to “Build that Wall!”  And, given that he was elected to the presidency, all patriotic Americans should work together to help him fulfill his promises.

Really???????

Really???????

I have suggested to those who suggested this preposterous puffery that things did not turn out well for the last monarch—or, his loyalist followers—who attempted to exercise “the divine right of kings” over the American people; the tyranny of obligatory obedience and all that.  And, given that George III’s rule over the American colonists ended with the beginning of an evolving democratic republic that has become the longest in the history of the world, one senses that any attempt to return us to, uh, royal rule would turn out even less well for “he who would be king”—and, his loyalist followers.

Off with his hair!

As an American citizen, I don’t serve Donald Trump and I am under no obligation to agree with or support either his personal statements/policies/actions or his official statements/policies/actions.  My allegiance is not to any one person or any group of people.  My allegiance is to my country, to the Constitutional framework that orders its values and its life, and to the American Idea, the possibility of whose fulfillment, in the best of times and with the best of leaders, pulls my country inexorably toward its best future.

We shouldn’t have been surprised when, on the day before Donald Trump was scheduled to fly to Quebec for the G-7 Summit, the White House floated the possibility that he might not go at all.  It was, of course, a trial balloon sent up to test how the public—or, better, his 32% base of aggrieved white people—would respond if he were to be a no-show at this gathering of some of our oldest allies and/or biggest trading partners.  The “base”—along with the amateurs, poseurs, grifters and media hangers-on who populate the White House precincts and provide a steady, 24/7 diet of groveling approval to the president’s fragile ego—would no doubt have given him a standing ovation for his “America First” (which, interpreted per this administration’s policies, more closely resembles “America Alone”) tendencies.  Fortunately, there are a few fact-based, reality-based professionals—an “endangered species” in this administration—left who convinced him that not attending was not an option.

Or, perhaps, unfortunately.  We—as well as our gathered allies and trading partners—might have been better off had he not attended.

It was clear from his pre-summit tweets that the first Juvenile President in American history was not planning to “play nice” with our country’s best friends from around the globe.  And his presidential pout/petulance was on full display when he was a conspicuously late arrival on Friday evening, a conspicuously late arrival for a working breakfast on Saturday morning and a conspicuously early departer at midday on Saturday—skipping Saturday afternoon’s plenary session, during which the group was scheduled to discuss such, uh, insignificant and irrelevant and low-impact issues as the Paris Climate Accord, Gender Equality and the Iran Nuclear Deal.   All together now, in unison:  Classic Passive-Aggressive!

Why the reluctance of this president to “play nice” or, God forbid, actually participate in what became the G6+1 Summit?  What’s up with the presidential pout?  The presidential petulance?

Easy.

Donald Trump was afraid.

Or, as my cousins who populate and farm the deeps of the South Carolina coastal plain might put it, he was “skeered.”

Trump likes to project the image of a Tough Guy, a Strongman Autocrat whose “deal-making” abilities are superior to anyone on the planet. But he does so from the safety of his lonely White House bedroom where, pathetically, his bully-pulpit is a cell phone and a twitter feed. Or, from the safety of one of his adulation fests where committed, servile mobs wearing “Hillary Is A C**t” t-shirts (they don’t use the asterisks) gather to listen and applaud and cheer his lie-filled rally-rants against… 

(1) “the Fake News media,”

(2) “the Failing New York Times,”

(3) “Amazon’s sweetheart deal with the USPS” (read, “the Washington Post and, by extension, Jeff Bezos”),

(4) “Crooked Hillary” (Trump has been a principal in over 3,500 litigations, Ms. Clinton has never been a principal in a court action save those in which she served as counsel for a litigant),

(5) “Lyin’ Jim Comey,”

(6) “the Mueller Witch Hunt/Hoax,”

(7) “Mueller’s thirteen angry Democrats,”

(8) “Turncoat John McCain,”

(9) the “sons-of-bitches who should be fired” from their NFL teams” for “disrespecting The Flag,” “disrespecting The National Anthem,” “disrespecting our Mighty Military,” “disrespecting our Veterans,” and “disrespecting Mom, Apple-Pie, Christmas and the Easter Bunny” when they #TakeAKnee,

(10) immigrants from “s**thole countries” as opposed to, uh, Norway,

(11) and the Democrats who should be “charged with treason (aww, why not?)” for not giving him standing ovations when he so poorly/stiffly read from the teleprompter the applause-lines his speechwriters wrote into his first State of the Union address this past January.  Apparently he has not been briefed on the fact that his new Bestie—the murderous North Korean punk/dictator, Kim Jong Un—had one of his generals executed for not applauding one of his speeches with, well, “appropriate vigor.”  And his critique of Democrats not applauding him with, well, “appropriate vigor” also provides a bit of context to his almost wistful observation that, when Kim Jong Un speaks, “his people sit up and pay attention.”  That followed by some really scary wishful thinking:  “I wish ‘my people’ did the same.”  [MEMO TO THE #EMPERORWANNABE:  Americans are not “your people.”  There may well be some who get up each morning and drink the Kool-Aid that renders them far more loyal to you than they are to our country—I’ll let you claim them as “yours.”  But, anyone who is more concerned about protecting you than protecting our country is a cultist, not a patriot.  The vast, vast majority of us pledge our allegiance not to you but “to the Republic for which [the Flag] stands.”  Let me say it again:  Americans are not “your people.”]   

Little Big Man is accustomed to Cabinet meetings that more often resemble worship services than the serious policy/action gatherings of previous presidents.  The televised versions have been   characterized not by a measured, calibrated exchange of and debate over differing policy opinions but by the highest-ranking members of the Executive Branch bowing, scraping and generally debasing themselves—in the instance of Mike Pence, humiliating himself—as they praise the Dear Leader.  And Trump has shown an unnerving appreciation and equally unnerving fondness for foreign leaders who relentlessly fete him when he visits—offering puke-inducing praise, projecting his multi-colored image on the largest buildings of their capital cities, putting on fireworks shows in his honor, inviting him to “review the troops” when they hold military parades (thanks a lot, Emmanuel Macron!) and, in general, conning him into believing that they really consider him to be #The Man.  Think, Saudi Arabia.  Think, the glowing orb.  Think, the sword dance.

But he knew that wasn’t the kind of welcome awaiting him at the historic Le Manoir Richelieu that grandly looks down on the St. Lawrence River as it pursues its course through the magnificent landscapes of Charlevoix, Quebec.

This president is beginning to realize, to his surprise and perhaps horror, that most members of the international governance community—allies and adversaries alike—have long had his number. These are highly-intelligent, highly-sophisticated and highly-experienced “deal-makers” who have done their “deals” on a stage far larger and far more significant than an office in Trump Tower or the Boardwalk of Atlantic City.  They know a Carnival Barker when they see one and, unlike Trump’s visceral, reflexive base, are most definitely not given to suffering gladly the pitch of a snake-oil salesman.  Neither a lot of time nor candlepower was required for them to size up Donald Trump as a rank amateur relative to deal-making beyond his world of New York and Florida construction/real-estate grifting.

Worse, he knew that his recent blustering, bloviating and intentionally confrontational comments/tweets/threats per trade policy had not gone over well with the allies and trading partners who would be attending the G-7.  Needless to say, Trump was uncomfortable-to-the-max with the idea that he would be met by a room full of serious world leaders who owe him nothing, see him for who/what he is and are more than willing to respond to his Big Bully act by, in the vernacular, giving him a piece of their own minds.

He would not be in the safe confines of the gaudy Main Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago.  Nor would he be in the safe company of the sycophantic, rich swells who hang out at Mar-a-Lago and to whom he has delivered 83% of the benefits of what he has falsely claimed to be “the biggest tax cut in history” and what he falsely claimed would be “tax cuts for the middle class that won’t make rich people a penny richer.” 

Instead, he would be in unfamiliar surroundings.  He would not be The Main Attraction but one player among several.  And he would be surrounded by men and women whose heft doesn’t owe to money but to history and power.  He would be surrounded by men and women who are not only his equals but arguably more-than-his-equals—possessed of more intelligence, more savvy and far, far more knowledge of the complexity and nuance of foreign policy and trade.  Most threatening to Trump, however, was the fact that he would be surrounded by men and women who, having grown weary of Trump’s incessant attacks and lectures, would have no qualms about holding The Troll-In-Chief accountable for his embarrassing twitter habits.  And, as we know all too well, The Donald doesn’t like being held accountable—for anything.

Hence, he was “skeered.”  And “got out of town,” so to speak, as quickly as he could, claiming that his early departure would give him more time to, uh, “study up” for his imminent summit with Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

The world laughed.

I mean, Donald Trump “studying up” for something?  The man doesn’t read and has the attention span of a mosquito.

The world laughed even harder when it was revealed that, upon reaching Singapore, he wanted to “move up a day” his scheduled summit with the North Korean Pariah because he was “bored.”  Wait, Donald, we thought you left the G-7 early because you needed time to “study up” for your Extended Photo-Op with your new Bestie.  Wasn’t that the reason given us by your honest-to-a-fault press office?

People, Donald Trump is not #The Man.  He’s not Tough.  He’s a criticism-averse, thin-skinned Faux Bully, a Lion with no Teeth, just another Internet Troll too cowardly to say face-to-face what, hidden behind closed bedroom curtains, he uses his tiny fingers to tap out on Twitter.  He’s the “400 pound guy” with incoherent hair, orange skin, a poorly tied tie, a suit coat he can’t button up because he’s so porked up, “sitting on his bed” trying to undo the democratic norms upon which our country is built, splinter the Western Alliance so his autocratic faves will give him a seat at their table, and essentially change the world for the worse via the web.   

The President of the United States is nothing but a damned #Snowflake.